Hero Motocorp Extends Closure Of Manufacturing Plants And Other Facilities By Another Week

In view of the prevailing Covid-19 situation across the country, Hero MotoCorp - the world’s largest manufacturer of motorcycles and scooters - has decided to extend the shutdown at its manufacturing facilities across India, its Global Parts Center (GPC) in Neemrana and its R&D facility – the Centre of Innovation and Technology (CIT) in Jaipur – by another week, till May 16, 2021.

This is also in keeping with its commitment to the safety and welfare of its people and to break the chain of the spread of Covid-19.

The company is continuously monitoring the situation and is ready with its business continuity plans to be able to quickly resume and scale up operations as and when the situation improves. 

Hero MotoCorp had proactively halted the plant operations temporarily in a staggered manner for four days from April 22-May 1, which was then extended till May 9.

All corporate offices of the company have already been in Work from Home (WFH) mode.

Sify Reports Revenue Of INR 24,320 Million For Financial Year 2020-21

 

MANAGEMENT COMMENTARY

Mr. Raju Vegesna, Chairman, said, “India is in the grip of the second wave of the COVID pandemic and governments have reintroduced lockdowns to deal with the calamity. The first wave was a wakeup call for large companies to increase their investment in automation, and that has helped insulate them to a large measure this time around. Now that the merits of automation have been firmly established, we should see more mid-sized businesses adopt automation aggressively.

The new normal has blurred the lines between work and home environment, calling for businesses to invest in security of their data over public networks. The challenge is in ensuring public networks are as secure and resilient as corporate networks.

That said, we wish for the scourge of the pandemic to be eradicated so that people and livelihoods can return to the old normal”.

Mr. Kamal Nath, CEO, said, “A year into the pandemic, all the industries - small, medium or large have accelerated their digital transformation and cloud adoption drive to be able to sustain and grow their businesses in a changed environment. Work from anywhere, movement to hybrid cloud platform, strengthening of disaster recovery plans to enable business continuity, application modernization – all these market trends find a natural solution in Sify’s “Cloud@core” model and offerings.

The other important highlight is the growth of Hyperscale CSPs and OTT players in India which on one hand is accelerating our Data Centre colocation business and on the other hand strengthening our hybrid cloud offerings.  Overall, we are absolutely on the right side of the trend curve”.

Mr. M P Vijay Kumar, CFO, said, “We continue to show steady growth through 2020-21 despite the challenges that the pandemic has posed. The healthy EBITDA growth has increased our confidence to spend on ramping up both people and tools to increase our digital transformation service capabilities.

We expect contracts to take slightly longer to conclude as clients take time to regain momentum. Our focus is on insulating the organization as we carefully manage our costs, while ensuring that there is no lag in services delivery and customer experience.

We are firm on our commitment to our data center, cloud and network centric expansion plans, and will exercise due caution in terms of both timing and cost structure of these projects.

Considering the resurgent pandemic and the uncertainty on pace of economy recovery, the Board did not recommend the payment of dividend this year and instead advised that capital be conserved.

Following shareholders’ approval, we have given effect to Business Transfer Agreements entered into, during the quarter, for the transfer of Data Center business and Digital Services business to wholly owned subsidiary companies.

Cash balance at end of the year was INR 5438 Million”.

About Sify Technologies

Sify Technologies is the India’s most comprehensive ICT services & solutions provider. With Cloud at the core of our solutions portfolio, Sify is focused on the changing ICT requirements of the emerging Digital economy and the resultant demands from large, mid and small-sized businesses.  Sify’s infrastructure comprising the largest MPLS network, top-of-the-line DCs, partnership with global technology majors, vast expertise in business transformation solutions modelled on the cloud make it the first choice of start-ups, incoming Enterprises and even large Enterprises on the verge of a revamp. More than 10000 businesses across multiple verticals have taken advantage of our unassailable trinity of Data Centers, Networks and Security services and conduct their business seamlessly from more than 1600 cities in India. Internationally, Sify has presence across North America, the United Kingdom and Singapore. Sify, www.sify.com, Sify Technologies and www.sifytechnologies.com are registered trademarks of Sify Technologies Limited.

Canara Bank Retains Interest Rates On Loans/Advances With Effect From 07.05.2021

Canara Bank, a leading Public Sector Bank, has retained its Marginal Cost of Fund Based Lending Rate (MCLR) on Loans / Advances across all tenors with effect from May 7, 2021.

Accordingly, the tenor linked MCLRs of the Bank shall be as under with effect from 07.05.2021:

Tenor                    Interest Rate (in %)

Overnight MCLR           6.70%

One-Month MCLR        6.70%

Three- Month MCLR    6.95%

Six-Month MCLR         7.30%

One Year MCLR           7.35%

Repo Linked Lending Rate (RLLR) continues to be at 6.90%. 

About Canara Bank:

Widely known for customer centricity, Canara Bank was founded by Shri Ammembal Subba Rao Pai, a great visionary and philanthropist, in July 1906, at Mangaluru, then a small port town in Karnataka. Canara Bank is the fourth-largest public sector bank in the country after its amalgamation with Syndicate Bank in April 2020. At present, it is functioning with 10,498 Branches, and 13,023 ATMs throughout. The Bank has gone through various phases of its growth trajectory over the hundred years of its existence. The growth of Canara Bank was phenomenal, especially after nationalization in the year 1969, attaining the status of a national level player in terms of geographical reach and clientele segments. In June 2006, the Bank completed a century of operation in the Indian banking industry. The eventful journey of the Bank has been characterized by several memorable milestones. Today, Canara Bank occupies a premier position in the comity of Indian banks.

Crediwatch Seeks To Enable COVID-19 Relief Teams To Verify Suppliers And Combat Fraud

 

Crediwatch (CW), a digital trust platform, has developed tools to help validate medical service providers for Covid-19 relief across India, in a bid to combat fraud in relief efforts. CW aims to enable Covid-19 relief workers, doctors, hospitals and resource teams to quickly ascertain the bonafides of a supplier of medical supplies such as liquid oxygen, medicines, surgical masks and so on.

Unfortunately, this crisis has seen bad actors take advantage of relief work. For example, bogus suppliers have not delivered medical oxygen that they were paid for by aid organisations. Many fraudsters have emerged who claim to offer a service and fail to deliver after collecting premium payments for it.

“Validation of supplier or vendor information on relief networks and websites is a manual process, making it time consuming. This is diverting our resources and reducing the impact of relief work at a crucial time,” said   Meghna Suryakumar  , founder and CEO

of Crediwatch, adding, “As startups and business leaders, we realise that we are in a position to impact this unprecedented situation positively.”

Since the onset of the pandemic, public, private and civic organisations have circulated information about hospital bed availability, medical supplies such as oxygen, masks, sanitiser and so on. This information is largely crowdsourced and has been a collective effort of several voluntary groups, including the startup community, stepping up to help society-at-large. However, much of this information is being shared without adequate verification on social media, messaging platforms and through relief networks.

“Even in these unprecedented times, there have been reports of bad actors trying to pocket money by making false promises and trying to pose as legitimate service providers,” said   , Head of Product at Crediwatch. “In our efforts to curb

disinformation, we have put our AI/ML technology tools to the task of verifying supplier profiles,” he said, adding that this has been possible thanks to supporting partners and networks, who are each doing their bit in this collaborative effort.

How it works

CW’s web platform or APIs (application programming interface) enable relief networks to instantly run checks on businesses claiming to offer a service. CW’s bot infrastructure and proprietary scores will identify any potential risks with a business entity. Only validated businesses can be retained by various relief networks providing critical care across India.

Crediwatch at its core works towards solving the problem of information collection, validation and verification and offers insights based on this data. Relief networks intending to use CW’s web-based platform or APIs could use it in the following ways:

1.        Verify the name of the business entity claiming to offer a service (For example: a hospital, a pharmacy, a restaurant, an oxygen supplier, a cylinder manufacturer). This is done using a combination of proprietary data about businesses along with public information from GSTN data. CW will confirm the existence of an entity (business/proprietor) using information from over 2500 public records.

2.        Verify phone numbers in an automated, API enabled manner. This is intended to give three pieces of information:

a.       The validity of the phone number along with the last tried date/time.

b.      The reachability of the phone number with the last tried date/time.

c.       Whether the business/entity is continuing to accept requests for service. This is based on disclosures by the service provider when contacted by our automated bot via an IVR response.

About Crediwatch

Crediwatch (CW) is an industry-defining AI/ML-powered technology and data science company. CW is a digital trust platform that lenders and businesses rely on for actionable intelligence and predictive analytics on the overall health of businesses. CW does this with no human intervention by deploying the latest practical Artificial Intelligence (AI) and technology tools that provide the most reliable comprehensive real time inputs possible.

The automated platform accesses over 2500 public data sets as well as ingests private data under consent to generate risk scores, monitor redflags and leverage AI to predict potential distress with a 12-month lead time. The bot infrastructure enables an exhaustive coverage of over 10 million business entities in India with any form of digital footprint.

Founded in 2016 by Meghna Suryakumar and Sandeep Anandampillai, Crediwatch is backed by leading investors from Silicon Valley as well as strong local investors and has received many recognitions from the likes of HDFC Bank, Citibank and Barclays.

Manipal Institute Of Technology Students Awarded Prestigious Knight-Hennessy Scholarship For Master’s Program At Stanford University

Two students of Manipal Institute of Technology, MAHE, Manipal, Ms. Akshatha Kamath, Computer Science & Engineering and Mr. Dhruv Suri, Aeronautical Engineering, have been awarded the prestigious Knight-Hennessy Scholarship for pursuing Master’s Program at Stanford University, USA. The Knight-Hennessy Scholars program is a prestigious award that fosters a multidisciplinary, multicultural community of emerging leaders from around the world and guides them to collaborate, innovate, and communicate as they prepare to address the complex challenges facing the society. Akshatha and Dhruv are the only 2 students selected from India among the total of 76 students representing 26 countries that have made to the program this year.

Ms. Akshatha Kamath hails from Udupi and will be pursuing her Master’s degree in Education Data Science at Stanford Graduate School of Education. She is passionate to develop solutions for personalized learning for diverse learning needs. She has also developed a platform called ‘SantaNet’ to connect the underprivileged orphans with motivated volunteers. Akshatha has also developed several medical technologies winning her the MIT Covid 19 Challenge. She also won the Stanford Health ++ Hackathon at Stanford University, with travel support from the Dr TMA Pai Endowment Chair in Health Informatics, Manipal.

Mr Dhruv Suri is from Delhi and will be pursuing his Master’s degree in energy resources engineering at Stanford School of Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences. He aspires to work at the nexus of energy and climate and help vulnerable communities overcome access barriers in India and other developing countries. Dhruv is a co-founder of Candela Energy, a last mile distribution organization providing rural villages access to life-improving products and has been awarded by ETH student project house in Switzerland and EarthTech in Australia.

Dr. H. S. Ballal, Pro Chancellor, MAHE, applauded Akshatha Kamath and Dhruv Suri on being awarded the prestigious Knight-Hennessy Scholarship. “The scholarship is a recognition of the exceptional talent and innovative approach of Akshatha and Dhruv. They have demonstrated that excellence in education, an entrepreneurial mindset and a genuine compassion for the society transform the lives of people.  They have upheld the vision of MAHE in letter and spirit”.

Lt. Gen. (Dr.) M. D. Venkatesh, Vice Chancellor, MAHE, congratulated Akshatha Kamath and Dhruv Suri on being awarded the Knight-Hennessy Scholarship. “It is indeed a great moment of celebration for MAHE that its students have repeatedly proved to be among the best in the world. I extend my best wishes to Akshatha Kamath and Dhruv Suri and look forward to more such glories in the near future”. 

Dr. D Srikanth Rao, Director MIT, MAHE, expressed happiness on the achievement of MIT students. “The students have made MIT proud and hope that they will continue to contribute in solving the problems faced by our society and emerge as future leaders. MIT’s culture of experiential learning and encouragement towards societal outreach has borne fruits”, he opined. 

Aditya Chopra Launches ‘Yash Chopra Saathi Initiative’ To Provide Support To Industry’s Daily Wage Earners

The deadly coronavirus pandemic has plagued the entertainment industry since last year and again the Hindi film industry has come to a halt, given the huge spike in COVID-19 cases due to the second wave of infections. Last year, during the lockdown, Aditya Chopra lent his support to thousands of daily wager earners of the film industry by crediting money directly into their bank accounts. The biggest production house of India, Yash Raj Films, has again decided to come forward in this moment of need and is launching the ‘Yash Chopra Saathi Initiative’ to provide support to thousands of daily workers in the film industry.

Aditya Chopra has taken cognizance of the massive socio-economic and humanitarian crisis that the daily workers of the industry are currently facing and The Yash Chopra Foundation - is rolling out the 'Yash Chopra Saathi Initiative' so that thousands of daily wage earners can tide over these turbulent and highly unpredictable times.

As part of the initiative, the foundation will initiate a direct benefit transfer of Rs 5000 to the women and senior citizens of the industry as well as distribute Ration kits to workers for a family of 4 for an entire month through their NGO partners Youth Feed India. Through an online application process at https://yashchoprafoundation.org, those in need can apply immediately to avail this support from YRF.

Akshaye Widhani, Senior Vice President, Yash Raj Films says, “The Yash Chopra Foundation is committed to constantly and relentlessly being a support system to the Hindi film industry and its workers who have been an integral part of our 50 year journey. The pandemic has pushed the backbone of our industry, the daily workers, to a breaking point and YRF wants to support as many workers and their families who are in need due to the loss of livelihood. Yash Chopra Saathi Initiative is aiming to provide support to the pandemic hit workers of our industry who we urgently need to focus on.”

Influencing Future Of Cloud Security With MITRE ATT&CK For Containers

* Trend Micro contributes to new framework, helping businesses build and deploy secure container environments 

Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), the global leader in cloud security, is proud to have contributed research and resources to support MITRE's development of the new Container Framework. 

Trend Micro threat intelligence heavily contributed to the development of ATT&CK for Containers. Trend Micro collaborated with MITRE, providing several years of dedicated research as evidence-based input that was used for the framework.

"Trend Micro was one of the companies that answered our call to the community when we began developing ATT&CK for Containers through the Center for Threat-Informed Defense," said Jen Burns, a lead cybersecurity engineer at MITRE. "We are all working to help companies stay protected against attacks using knowledge bases like ATT&CK as a common language. Contributors like Trend Micro, with expertise and experience with real-world attacks, help us support the security community in reaching that goal." 

Trend Micro provided evidence from real-world attacks to support seven MITRE Techniques. Two of these techniques are new and unique to ATT&CK for Containers. Businesses can use these techniques to better understand how attackers are targeting container environments and how to protect from these threats. 

"It has been a privilege to support MITRE through the development of their new container framework," said Wendy Moore, vice president of product marketing for Trend Micro. "The extensive research community within Trend Micro is always focused on helping protect our customers and the broader digital world from the threats of today and tomorrow. We saw containers as a growing opportunity for attackers several years ago and have worked hard to get ahead of these threats. Partnerships like this with MITRE give our work a broader influence and we are happy to support their efforts." 

Trend Micro Cloud One – Container Security leverages the company's deep research expertise to protect customers. The tool is designed to ease the security of container builds, deployments and runtime workflows while helping developers accelerate innovation and minimize application downtime across their container environments. 

About Trend Micro 

Trend Micro, a global cybersecurity leader, helps make the world safe for exchanging digital information. Fueled by decades of security expertise, global threat research, and continuous innovation, Trend Micro's cybersecurity platform protects hundreds of thousands of organizations and millions of individuals across clouds, networks, devices, and endpoints. As a leader in cloud and enterprise cybersecurity, the platform delivers a powerful range of advanced threat defense techniques optimized for environments like AWS, Microsoft, and Google, and central visibility for better, faster detection and response. With 7,000 employees across 65 countries, Trend Micro enables organizations to simplify and secure their connected world.